Fernando

Enjoyable? Yes. Dispensable? Absolutely. Almost 6 hours of excellent acting that we kind of could do without. Writing missteps undermine the performances so much that these, even if technically flawless, seem to have lost that emotional punch from the first season. Not everything is bad. I especially appreciated the nuanced portrayal of grief from an abused woman in which is arguably the only storyline that did require the look at the aftermath the show touted. Renata having more presence is nice to have, and clearly the writers dully noted the sensation it sparked two years ago. But the Bonnie storyline is messy and at times wretched, the arrival of her mother and specially this being some sort of clairvoyant were pure filler scenes. Court scenes demand a leap of faith that legal dramas fans may not want to take. Somehow other characters (Ed) have more screentime and depth but end up feeling more vacuous than ever.

Overall, it's a bumpy ride that may only be worth it for the pleasure of seeing so many stars on the set, as some sort of one-in-a-lifetime supergroup concert that we're almost to lucky to witness. Too bad the script wasn't on a par with them this time.

The previous episodes were quite convincing, exemplary even. I found this to be unfittingly sensationalist, with a taste for dramatics. For me question is not necessarily whether to show or not show, but rather how to show it, because if you do it wrong you will suffer from that Handmaid's Tale syndrome. So the dogs scenes, I don't oppose them by nature, but it's your narrative devices that can give you away if you go for a too-on-the-nose staging. If they warn the boy about missing the mark and leaving the dogs in agony it's a bit frustrating that's exactly what happens. The puppies thing was a bit too much, in an annoying way, because of course they had to do it. Same (even worse) with that 'volunteer' and the orders not to gaze at the reactor or the perils of stumbling. It's not that is unrealistic, it could very well have happened and makes sense, but it comes across as weak writing and makes you more aware of the string of catastrophic, explicit scenes you've being showed. It's not that we need to know what happens if they stumble on the roof, we would probably have screamed the same if we weren't told, at least in such a nagging way. At least they restrained from showing the dying baby.